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Becoming a manager is an important milestone in an individual’s career, and a make-or-break stage for your organization’s talent development. New managers need a host of new skills to succeed, both technical and social-emotional. While training seminars and boot camps can equip new leaders with information and technical skills, coaching with BetterUp helps them develop the interpersonal skills they need to inspire, coach and lead their team.

New ManagersDeveloping Skills & Behaviors for Inspirational Leadership

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Great individual contributors don’t necessarily have managerial skills

On-the-job learning isn’t enough to develop managers

The cost of manager failure is high

The skills that make a strong manager are markedly different from those that make a strong individual contributor. Indeed, new managers must quickly develop new technical managerial skills, like delivering feedback and aligning work streams, as well as social-emotional skills like authentic communication, navigating conflict, and recognition to inspire and motivate their team.

While training and bootcamps can help managers learn the technical skills they need to succeed, social-emotional skills are much harder to develop in a one-time workshop. Opportunities to practice and refine these leadership behaviors are highly situational, and require ongoing accountability, feedback and guidance to develop.

Most new managers ‘fail or flail’. An estimated 50% of new managers fail within their first year on the job.¹ Of the 50% who don’t outright fail, most ‘flail’—learning by trial and error to move slowly up the competency curve.2

The fact that most new managers struggle is not surprising when we look at how new managers are prepared (or not prepared) for their new roles. According to a survey by DDI of 1,130 frontline managers, only 11% said they were groomed to be a leader, and 57% said they learned their leadership skills through trial and error.3 In fact, a McKinsey study revealed most companies’ training budgets under-fund new manager development, focusing instead on frontline employees and executives.4

When managers aren’t getting enough support for the technical elements of managing, you can be sure they’re not developing the soft skills they need to nurture, coach and motivate their teams.

Across industries, studies show manager effectiveness has a huge impact on team performance, affecting engagement, creativity, productivity and retention. Strong managers boost team performance and retention, and poor managers hamper it.

In fact, 50% of attrition is due to poor managers.5 A Gallup study found out of 7,200 people surveyed, over 50% left “to get away from their manager.” Another cost of poor managerial skills is that bad managers ‘poison the well’ of team engagement.6 Manager effectiveness accounts for 70% of variance of engagement— more than any other factor. This means poor managers are the single biggest driver of disengagement.

Industry-specific reports have quantified this effect in monetary terms. One report showed strong manager effectiveness at a Fortune 500 mortgage lender could mean a difference of $5.7M in pre-tax profit.7 Another estimates the cost of a failed sales manager is $4M.8

Only 10% of senior leaders say their companies’ frontline manager training effectively prepares managers to lead. The 10% of companies that do find their training effective emphasizes leadership and interpersonal skills, not technical skills.9 While technical managerial skills are often easier to teach and measure, interpersonal skills drive manager performance equally, if not more. For instance, empathy has been proven as a key driver in manager performance,10 but empathy is difficult to teach in a classroom setting.

Leadership and Interpersonal Skills are Critical

1 2 3

Why Developing New Managers Is So Important

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BetterUp Coaching for Soft Skills That Lead to Managerial ExcellenceWith so much on the line, companies must ensure their new managers are equipped with technical managerial skills, company-specific protocols, and most importantly, skills to inspire, motivate, and coach their teams. Coaching with BetterUp can augment new manager trainings or bootcamps, to develop relationship skills proven to enhance leadership effectiveness:

ElevatesInspiring your TeamCoachingRecognitionEncouraging Ownership

DrivesEnvisioning GoalsNavigating ConflictDelivering Feedback Influence

Coaching is proven to deliver faster onboarding in new roles, faster leadership development, and higher emotional intelligence.11 New managers benefit significantly from coaching to develop leadership skills and avoid common pitfalls when entering the new role. By using the most effective tool to develop the critical soft skills that make successful managers, companies can aid this important transition.

Developing these interpersonal leadership skills and behaviors requires a methodology that matches to the way individuals learn and adopt them. To change or create new behaviors, the BetterUp coaching features:

Personalized 1:1 relationship with an expertJust-in-time skill development,

to tackle new challenges as they arise, and .... share best practices in new and unfamiliar circumstances.

Continuous (not episodic) engagement

Interpersonal skills and leadership behaviors are not developed

in a single afternoon or during a week-long offsite. Coaches work with new managers in

high-frequency, low intensity interactions, so managers

can shape and refine leadership skills and behaviors over time.

Built-in accountabilityWithout accountability, the desire

to be a better leader quickly becomes a good intention that falls by the wayside as pressing

day-to-day matters take precedent. Coaches ensure that new

managers develop the skills they need, not relying on their old, Individual Contributor ways of

getting work done.

Practice with feedbackA safe space to try on new

behaviors, reflect on how the new behavior worked, and

receive personalized, objective, development-oriented

feedback is the difference between trial and error and

real skill development.

IncludesOpen Communication Trust ClimateFostering ParticipationEmpathyActive Listening

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Sources1. Inc. Magazine, The Easy Way to Help a New Manager Succeed, 2015

2. DDI World, Finding the First Rung, 2015

3. DDI World, Finding the First Rung, 2015

4. McKinsey, How Companies Manage the Front Line Today, 2010

5. Fortune, Half of us Have Quit our Job Because of a Bad Boss

6. Harvard Business Review, Why Good Managers Are So Rare, 2014

7. Corporate Executive Board, The $4 Million Mistake, 2014, 2015

8. Zenger Folkman, How Extraordinary Leaders Double Profits, 2014

9. McKinsey, How Companies Manage the Front Line Today, 2010

10. DDI, Is Empathy Boss, 2016

11. International Coaching Federation & HCI, Building a Coaching Culture, 2014

About BetterUpBetterUp unlocks the potential of emerging leaders with career coaching to build leadership behaviors at scale. The personalized development approach gives these employees accountability, guidance, and feedback to develop skills and leadership behaviors so they can thrive in their current role and hone capabilities for the long term. BetterUp energizes high potential employees, prepares rising leaders for new challenges, drives measurable improvement in workforce KPIs, fast tracks leadership development, and helps enterprise employees find more meaning at work.

For more information on BetterUp, visit betterup.co or email getbetterup@betterup.co